Like A Poet's Hands
by bj
Summary: "This is all we can do, you know. Push this squeaky damn cart and buy Vietnamese long-grain rice." CJ in the grocery store.


Disclaimer: 'The West Wing' and all related materials are the sole property of Aaron Sorkin, NBC, and various other capitalist strongholds. Fight the power, but if you want to pay for this, pay them, you fool.  
  
Author's Note: This story is the second in a trilogy focusing on those characters not normally thought of as poets, but who I consider literarily amazing nonetheless. The first story is "A Poet Sleeping There," which is Josh.  
  
  
  
Like A Poet's Hands  
  
by BJ Garrett  
  
Her head was pounding, and the large-lensed dark glasses she wore weren't helping as much as she thought they should. The shopping cart rolled along like Sisyphus's boulder, the right-hand front wheel jerking and squeaking. CJ's fingers ached around the cold plastic push handle. The bruise on her left palm was a small knot of pain.  
  
The grocery store was kitschy and garish under bright fluorescent lighting. Red-aproned stock boys stacked and unstacked cans of dog food at the end of the aisle. She could hear the beeping cash registers at the front of the store as she deliberated over whether or not to try this new soy cereal.  
  
Why she was shopping at all was a good question, she noted. They were leaving for Manchester in two days. She was rarely at home lately anyhow, but she would be gone for a week. Shopping was kind of useless at this point.  
  
She flexed her fingers, resisting the urge to crack the knuckles noisily. It was bad for her joints, she'd read. With menopause would come arthritis if she didn't stop cracking her knuckles. But they hurt so much..  
  
After glancing around furtively, she linked her fingers together and pressed them, palms out, against the handle of the cart.  
  
A disappointing popping sound failed to get the attention of the stock boys.  
  
"Price check aisle four. Canned peas. Price check to register six," the tinnily bored voice of a cashier echoed in the cold, empty air. When the phone was hung up noisily, muzak drifted back through the aisles, bringing a measure of false warmth.  
  
One of the boys rose from his labour and ran down the aisle with a panicked expression. She shook her head and pressed on against the pain in her joints, forgetting about cereal. They acted like a misplaced label was a disaster. They had no clue what the definition of disaster was.  
  
"Excuse me, miss," a cracked voice said gently at her elbow.  
  
Surprised to find herself addressed as 'miss' instead of liar, bitch, or collaborator, she looked down. "Yes?"  
  
The lady was old. Her hair was covered by a plastic rain hood, tied stalwartly beneath her sagging wrinkly chin like a crowning piece of armour. She smiled up at CJ serenely.  
  
"Would you mind just reaching up there and getting me a sack of rice, dear?"  
  
Still unsure of the situation, CJ slid her sunglasses off and dropped them into the child's seat beside her purse. Her eyes winced, though her face remained studiously puzzled.  
  
"Pardon me?" she asked, bending toward the woman a little.  
  
Her smile turning understanding, the lady patted her arm and pointed past her. "Just a sack of rice, up there, on the top shelf, dear. If you wouldn't mind?"  
  
CJ looked where she pointed. To the right, just above her head, was a narrow selection of bagged rice. She reached up, letting her fingers play over the sharp seams of the plastic bags, reading the labels. An uncontrollable part of her brain started rolling rice production statistics and factoids on her peripheral vision. "What--what kind would you like?"  
  
"Well!" the old lady exclaimed. "I don't know. I haven't bought rice in years, dear. My husband was the only one who ate it. Loved the stuff--he was in the Pacific and Korea and the Nam, got hooked on that food they eat over there. He's passed on for nearly ten years now, bless his soul. They buried him in Arlington properly, I'm proud to say. It's my granddaughter's boyfriend, you see. He's a vegetarian or somesuch, and I'd like to try one of his recipes for him when they come over for dinner tomorrow. What do you recommend?"  
  
CJ had closed her eyes, relaxing in the warm deluge of words. When the question was put to her, she snapped alert, swallowing. Relieved. Their eyes searched her, as if she were a different person. Her arm jerked, recoiling from its impact against the wall. "I don't, I don't know. What are you making?"  
  
She could tell the woman thirty different strains of long-grain rice, as well as the six new genetically modified breeds, the names of the scientists who developed them and the companies who sponsored the research, the nutritional benefits of either versus traditional brown rice, and which countries grew and exported each. This surprised her. She had always thought the useless information she memorised disappeared as soon as she used it.  
  
"Vegetable curry, I think," the grandmother mused. "Yes, vegetable curry. It's spicy, I know, but the doctor says I should eat more adventurous things. Just as long as I know what's in it, I'll eat it, I told him."  
  
"Curry," CJ said to herself, skimming her fingers over the labels again. She had no clue. She'd never eaten curry in her life. Sam would know. The red and yellow label of Phô Lam Yummy White Rice caught her eye and she grabbed the bag.  
  
It was reassuringly heavy in her hand. This was a burden which could be measured, weighted, dissected. It could be shared out into the hands of others so she didn't have to carry it alone. This was not a boulder, this was a bucket of water.  
  
"This is all we can do, you know. Push this squeaky damn cart and buy Vietnamese long-grain rice. That's all we can do." She laughed, looking at the plastic bag in her hand. The small grains sifted through her fingers, pulling the bag taut.  
  
The grandmother clucked her tongue and rested a spotty hand on CJ's wrist. "Don't worry, dear," she said gently. "Everything comes out in the end."  
  
CJ laughed again, wearily. "That's kinda what I'm afraid of."  
  
Eyes drooping in sympathy, the old lady nodded seriously. "It's all right. We're all strong enough to push on a little farther, a little longer." She looked down at her thin purple-veined fingers on CJ's pale skin. "You've got the hands of a poet, you know," she said conspiratorially, as if it were a secret, or a mystical birthmark. As if it affected her destiny in untold ways. "My daughter's a poet--she has the most elegant hands, like yours."  
  
Struck speechless, CJ looked down at her hand where it lay under the lady's, aching fingers curled around the handle of the cart. The grandmother lifted her hand away and CJ could see it. The fingers of her left hand smoothing paper while those of her right clutched a pen helplessly, writing. Writing. Pressing down on the bruise to feel the pain. She squeezed the bag of rice, slowly bringing it down and across her chest, holding it out to the woman.  
  
"I don't write," she denied. "I'm not a writer."  
  
Chuckling, the old lady took her rice. "That doesn't mean anything, dear. It's just your hands. Like a poet's hands. Thank you."  
  
CJ turned her eyes to her empty hand, fingers curled, as if waiting for a gift to be placed in them. The pointed fleshy pads of her fingers, nails peeking over the edge, long fragile twigs perched on her palm like birds about to take flight. Her lifeline stretched, wrinkled, cleaving her thumb away.  
  
"You're welcome," she said as if she were saying 'thank you,' though she knew the lady was gone. If she looked, there would be no bustling raincoat, no rattan handbag clamped in a plump elbow behind the handles of a laden shopping basket.  
  
So she didn't look. She closed her hand, accepting the gift of two days before Manchester. The stock boy had returned to stacking cans in companionable silence with his freckled partner.  
  
Placing her fist on the handle of the boulder, she steeled her shoulders and pushed on. Not much farther now.  
  
Forty miles outside Phô Lam, a man straightened from picking rice and nodded at his wife in the next paddy. She smiled back, wrist-deep in murky water.  
  
They kept pulling. Not much longer now.  
  
End. 


End file.
